The
early initiatives of the Bush Administration and its backup team on Capitol Hill
have brought no great surprises to anyone familiar with the political scene in
Washington, D.C. The President’s public threat to void airline workers’ right to
strike has already undermined labor negotiations and is consistent with his
overall agenda to pander to business interests at the expense of those who must
work for a living. Attacks on workers’ safety, union wages, personal solvency,
and collective bargaining have begun with a fervor we have not witnessed since
the early 1980s. Big business support of an anti-worker political agenda drew
blood during the last election cycle, and the sharks are circling closer and
closer.

Airline pilots know, all too well, that we cannot always fly through blue
skies—that sometimes we have to fly in or around stormy weather. We look ahead,
estimate the strength and direction of the storm, double-check our resources,
build a plan to safely get to our destination, and then move forward, adjusting
our flight path as required. We follow this same course in the political arena.

Many years ago, when ALPA’s Board of Directors established our Global Pilot
Strategy, we projected the size and strength of the obstacles we would face, set
a course, and took off. ALPA’s plan to create a unified voice for airline
pilots—part of the Global Pilot Strategy—is even more important now. We must
strengthen and use effectively all of our professional resources and political
clout. And as we do not want to hand the sharks any advantage to use against us,
all of our actions must remain within the laws and regulations that govern our
collective bargaining.

Recently, some airline managements have waged a campaign with the public to
blame flight delays on "labor problems" when, in fact, mismanagement, bad
weather, and the need for ATC modernization are the real culprits. Labor
problems do exist. When management declares "open season" on employees, labor
problems will arise. Some airline officials, however, are trying to work with
their employees. They recognize the advantages of offering fair wages and
working conditions. They are proffering early bargaining dates to correct
compensation, retirement, and work rule inadequacies that have arisen as other
airline workers successfully conclude bargaining.

Achieving pattern bargaining in the airline industry is no longer enough to
ensure our continued success. We now must work to establish a pattern for "best
practices" in bargaining—the best timelines and procedures to conclude
agreements so that we do not have to go through a 30-day cooling-off period,
only to have the President intervene when we seek self-help.

To create this pattern of best practices, we must ensure that every ALPA
pilot group, no matter what size, that goes into collective bargaining has
available every possible ALPA resource. In addition, I think we ought to drop
the use of the management labels "regional jet" and "regional airline" from
ALPA’s vocabulary. In many instances, nothing is "regional" about these airlines
or aircraft anymore. They fly from southern Mexico to Halifax, N.S.—indeed,
their "region" is the Western Hemisphere. So, let’s stop referring to Bombardier
or Embraer jets as "regional" jets, when our members already pilot them on
international flights. Let’s not help airline management and aircraft
manufacturers limit pilot pay